Food Safety Modernization Act Passes 73-25

The biggest U.S. food-safety overhaul in more than 70 years won Senate passage as lawmakers sought to curb food-borne illnesses that cost the nation an estimated $152 billion a year.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration would gain more power to police food companies under the bill that passed today in a 73-25 vote. The measure, backed by the food industry, public- health groups and consumer advocates, adds inspections and lets the FDA force recalls, rather than relying on companies to voluntarily remove contaminated foods from store shelves.

The bill had awaited a full Senate vote since winning unanimous approval a year ago by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. It was prompted partly by recalls of cookie dough, spinach, jalapenos and salmonella-tainted peanuts that killed at least nine people and sickened more than 700 in 2008 and 2009.

“It’s shocking to think that the last comprehensive overhaul of the food-safety system was in 1938,” Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who heads the health committee, said in debating the legislation this month. “Food safety has too often become a hit-or-miss gamble. That is frightening, and it’s unacceptable.”

The House, which passed a food-safety bill last year, has agreed to adopt the Senate version, bypassing the need for a conference to integrate the two bills, Harkin said Nov. 18. Once both chambers have approved the measure, lawmakers will send it to President Barack Obama for his signature. Obama urged the House in a statement today to “act quickly on this critical bill.”

Inspection Focus

The Senate bill calls for the FDA to inspect at least 600 foreign food facilities within a year of enactment, and double its number of foreign inspections in each subsequent year for five years. The measure would require inspections every three years for U.S. manufacturing and processing plants the FDA deems to be at a high risk for contamination, and every five years for all other domestic facilities.

Under that schedule, 50,000 foreign and domestic food facilities would be inspected in 2015 by the FDA or by federal, state, local or foreign officials acting on the agency’s behalf, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The legislation would cost about $1.4 billion during five years, according to CBO estimates.

The FDA inspected fewer than half of the 51,229 U.S. food facilities that were subject to such visits during the five years ending in 2008, federal investigators said in an April report that found “significant weaknesses” in the agency’s food-safety system.

Reduced Visits

Food facility inspections declined to 15,000 in 2008 from 17,000 in 2004, according to the report, issued by the Health and Human Services Department’s inspector general. The FDA oversees 80 percent of the nation’s food supply, with meat and poultry falling under Department of Agriculture jurisdiction.

The legislation would require most food producers to develop hazard prevention plans and would give the FDA access to those records when requested. Some local food producers with annual sales under $500,000 would be exempt from that rule under language written by Democratic Senator Jon Tester of Montana, an organic farmer.

Salmonella that made as many as 1,800 people ill this year was linked to eggs from two Iowa farms. The FDA said today that Wright County Egg, one Iowa producer tied to a salmonella outbreak this year, was cleared to resume U.S. shipments after more than 900 hours of inspections.

The Senate legislation “doesn’t fix the real problem” with the food safety system and may drive up food prices by $300 million to $400 million as companies pass compliance costs onto consumers, said Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican who opposed the measure.

The Senate rejected, in a 62-36 vote, an alternative food- safety proposal by Coburn that would have required FDA technology upgrades and more coordination between that agency and the Department of Agriculture.

“The problem with food safety is that the agencies don’t do what they’re supposed to be doing now,” Coburn said in today’s debate. “They don’t need more regulation; they need less.”

Prevention Strategies

Food-industry and consumer groups urged the House to pass the Senate measure quickly.

“This landmark legislation provides FDA with the resources and authorities the agency needs to help strengthen our nation’s food safety system by making prevention the focus of our food- safety strategies,” Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association in Washington, said in a statement. Nestle SA of Vevey, Switzerland, and Northfield, Illinois-based Kraft Foods Inc., the world’s two biggest food companies, are among the more than 300 members in the group.

Senate passage of the bill “represents a major milestone for food-safety reform,” Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives at the nonprofit Consumers Union in Yonkers, New York, said in an e-mail.

This site is now only an archive. You can access the main site at www.ytilaerniereh.com

Mike Masnick 16 August 2013 The saga of Lavabit founder Ladar Levison is getting even more ridiculous, as he explains that the government has threatened him with criminal charges for his decision to shut down the business, rather than agree to some mysterious court order. The feds are apparently arguing that the act of shutting … Continue reading →

August 15, 2013 Fox News by Allison Barrie The military aims to turn lasers weapons from science fiction into reality for everything from space platforms to Humvees. “RELI” is the Department of Defense’s relatively new Robust Electric Laser Initiative, which is meant to create next-generation lightweight, compact laser weapons. Weaponized lasers will bring n […]

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts 17 June 2013 In the 21st century the two hundred year-old propaganda that the American people control their government has been completely shattered. Both the Bush and Obama regimes have made it unmistakenly clear that the American people don’t even influence, much less control, the government. As far … Continue reading → […]

By Colin Todhunter Global Research 16 June 2013 “Historians may look back and write about how willing we are to sacrifice our children and jeopardize future generations with a massive experiment that is based on false promises and flawed science just to benefit the bottom line of a commercial enterprise.” So said Don Huber in referring … Continue reading […]

By Marjorie Cohn 13 June 2013 The Jurist For nearly three weeks, thousands of protestors have gathered peacefully at Occupy Gezi in Taksim Square in Istanbul. Turkish police have unleashed a brutal crackdown, resulting in three confirmed deaths and nearly 5,000 injured. According to Turkish lawyer Kerem Gulay, a Fulbright Scholar and … Continue reading […]

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Global Research 14 June 2013 Is president Obama setting the stage for a “humanitarian intervention” by casually accusing the Syrian president of killing his own people? “Following a deliberative review, our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a … […]

By Julian Barnes and Adam Entous WallStreetJournal 13 June 2013 WASHINGTON—A U.S. military proposal for arming Syrian rebels also calls for a limited no-fly zone inside Syria that would be enforced from Jordanian territory to protect Syrian refugees and rebels who would train there, according to U.S. officials. Asked by the White House to develop … Continue […]

Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com 14 June 2013 Ben Rhodes, the White House national security advisor behind the claim that President Bashar Al-Assad used chemical weapons in Syria, is a fiction writer with zero educational background in government, diplomacy or national security who also played a key role in covering up the truth behind the attack … Continue r […]